Matt LeBaron

I'll take 25 also please.

I had to get a booster pump when I went on well water. I haven't noticed the quick depleting DI resin that some have but I think it will vary by region significantly.

IMO spend a bit more on the Cobalts. Just tossed a Marineland pump that I used used to move water around for water changes because it was releasing a lot of electricity into the water. Shocked myself good when I was draining water out of my sump last week to clean the bottom of it and once the water got below my ground I got a really good shock, twice because I didn't put two and two together immediately. That pump hit the trash can quick. It was less than a year old and didn't see heavy use at all. Really terrible how poorly made they are now.

Really sorry to hear that. I used this stuff years ago and ended up having to take one of my seahorses to the vet for gas bubble disease afterwards because of it. Red Slime Remover is just terrible stuff that really should not be sold, period as far as I am concerned.

Yeah but the issue is that even if you assume that the quick mixing isn't happening (if it's not the editing makes it look like it a lot) many of the tank designs basically ensure that the tank inhabitants are stressed beyond belief. Even if the parameters are kept in perfect check (which I *REALLY* doubt given the way they stock their tanks) the stress alone will kill most of the fish. If someone built a small dog kennel, stuffed a dozen dogs into it, and then blared a bullhorn randomly every couple of minutes at the poor dogs who could not get away people would be up in arms at the individuals that did that. The sad truth is that the Tanked people do that on a regular basis and very few people seem to care.

I stopped watching Tanked after the first season episode where they build a half pike skateboard ramp fish tank. If all the fish in that tank weren't dead from stress within a month of skateboards constantly rolling up and down the glass I'll eat a shoe. That show is terrible on a level I cannot properly put into words.

Been on well water for about a year now. No issues with the water and that has not been covered above fairly well. Depending on how paranoid you are you may not want to put water change water from your tank into your septic system though. I do not because there is a chance that the salt water can kill off all of the fresh water bacteria that your septic system relies on. I've never seen any 100% yes/no on this issue but it can turn out to be an expensive mistake. The waste water from your RO unit is fine for the septic system, you'll be putting far nastier things into it.

Welcome to the club, like swffan said it's good to have more people up north. I'm just a bit west in Ellicott City and actually moved here from Catonsville less than a year ago.

I have kept a couple in my sump or frag tank for a couple years now. They're neat but in my experience grow WAY to slowly to be any kind of significant nutrient export. If you like the look of them go for it, they're relatively easy to keep and are neat but otherwise you're better off looking else where for nutrient export. My 2 cents...

Yeah the last two pictures are freshwater. The aquarium begins with saltwater and then transitions to fresh with some land critters like spiders and such, unfortunately my camera died out on me at the beginning of the freshwater area.

And this is why I occasionally find dead hermit crabs outside my gobies/pistol shrimp burrows. Poor little guys don't stand a chance.

So I'm in Bangkok, Thailand for business for a couple of weeks and managed to find time to go to the Siam Ocean World aquarium here. It's located in the basement of the Paragon Mall oddly enough. Not a huge aquarium but still a good size and it has a water tunnel that runs under the shark tank so that was neat, unfotunately the battery in my camera died before I got to that point. They also had a really impressive Seahorse exhibit with a tank with around 6 leafy seadragons that was a huge treat for me. So some pictures from my visit:

I used Ecoxotic Par38 bulbs hung from a rail system to spot like my SPS when I was using the Marineland Reef LED. Like was suggested above, if you don't want to get a whole new lighting system you could get a clip on fixture and use one of those. I've even got a couple I could sell you if you were interested in going that route since I recently put a DIY LED fixture over my tank.

It's going to be iffy for a clam to be honest I think. I have one of these and used it for about a year and a half to grow softies at all levels in my 90G. From the sand to near the top of the tank. I had decent growth and was happy with it for growing those out but for my SPS I used LED Par38 bulbs to grow them out because I just was not impressed with the coverage and intensity of the Marineland Reef LED. My general opinion on it is that it is on the low end of acceptable for SPS and from what I gather clams require similar light to SPS. So my 2 cents...

I've tried to keep Red Spot Cardinals in the past and just did not have long term luck with them. I think my longest lived one was 1.5 years and I went through 15 of them in that time. The one that lived the 1.5 years was from my first batch. They do require frequent feeding, which I was able to address some what because I already fed my seahorses twice a day. I lost three to jumping, those little buggers can jump like no other fish I have ever seen, if there's a hole they will find it. I also had a number just outright disappear, I still to this day have no clue what happened to them. The only thing I can think of is that they died and my pistol shrimp cleaned them up before I found them. I lost all but 1 of my last 5 when I had to move around a year ago (they don't move/ship well generally) and the last long lived one about 5-6 months ago. So after all of that being a downer please keep us up to date on how they work for you. Our hobby has example after example of hard to keep livestock becoming easy once we figured out the proper care of them. Oh and your setup is absolutely stunning. Great job.

Can they themselves have babies? Are they sterile from the mixed breeding? Very interesting.

Yep did a google search and that is what it looks like. Thanks for the ID. Unfortunately I am out of the country until late in the month so I won't be able to pick anything up. I'll start hunting when I get back.

My wife saw this coral at the House of Tropicals in one of their display tank and really liked it. Could someone ID it for me so I can look for it? She's usually just interested in the fish we have in the tank more than the corals so thought I would go hunting for this one for her. Helps to have a name though because sometimes it is hard to ID a coral from a small frag.

I've never noticed any long term harm and I've had some sit in the same place on my green slimer for over a day.

Heat gun could melt it, you need to be very careful using one with a softer plastic like vynl tubing. Like mentioned boiling water is best as that will not melt the entire thing. If boiling water is not an option for some reason (like it is already installed and you can't get it off) a heat gun can work but work slowly and carefully. A little can go a long way and the point of "Hey this seems to be working!" and "Holy crap I just melted this tubing closed!" is a couple of seconds. Also if you are using a heat gun pay attention to what is behind/next to/nearby as it is very easy to melt other things unintentionally. (Speaking from experience here)

I have to wonder how many Tangs will be stuffed into uncycled small tanks after this next movie. The first movie even spent a large amount of time explaining how the fish didn't like being in their fish tank and there was still the explosion of parents buying "Nemo" fish for their kids without any research into how to keep them alive and happy.

Might be a different variety of goby. There are a very wide selection of them.

Any temperature changes that you are aware of? I had some very similar issues when one of my heaters died and my temperature dropped a few degrees quickly.

Couple other things that I thought about after posting. For calibrating the drivers, I hooked up one string of the Royal Blue LEDs and then calibrated all four drivers using that string. This saved me time and effort because you have to wire in the voltmeter to calibrate them so just having to do it once and then adjusting each driver saved some time. Just make sure you label each one like I did and do it with the Blue LEDs as the Amps required to run those at the recommended level (1300mA) will burn out a number of the other LEDs (UV, Red, Green) while there is no harm in running the Royal Blues at the 700mA recommended for the other LEDs. Be careful with the adhesive, the Lenses are a very snug fit and if you apply to much adhesive it would be very easy to cover the actual LED with it. A tiny bit like I have in my picture above is all you need. Also when placing the lenses you have to align them with the LED because of how they fit. It can help to look at the side of the lenses there are little clear spots that allow you to align it correctly. I highly recommend dry fitting a couple of time to get use putting them on. You'll need a couple of extra wire nuts for the kit, they give you enough for the electrical wiring but not for the wiring to hook it up to a controller, not a big deal but I had to make a trip to HomeDepot because I didn't have wire nuts small enough. You'll likely also need more wire than they provide. I have my drivers near the ground and running the power all the way up to above my tank only left me with a bit of extra wire after hooking one up. You can get some 16 gauge wire from HomeDepot for about $5.50 in the electrical section.

So I bought the Rapid LED 90G Kit since I wanted a lighting solution for my tank that I could control with my Reef Angel controller. Rapid LED offers MeanWell drivers that are PWM controlled, which works well for me. I finished the build and got them on my tank in about 2 days and I thought I would document it here for anyone that may be interested in trying it. RapidLED has an excellent kit on their hands, I think they could really sell more if they just provided better instructions. So everything out of the box: The heat sinks top and bottom. The top has two groves with a lip that allow for the hanging kit to attach and for attachment of a fan if you want one. I'm still seeing if I think they get to warm or not. The kit comes with the heat sink pre-drilled, saves time and mess ups as far as I'm concerned. Close up of two of the LEDs on the heat sink. The kit comes with plenty of screws and little plastic washers to prevent you from over tightening the screws and damaging the heat sink that each LED has built into it. I also opted for the solderless kit, it's $20 more and in my opinion is a no brainer. If you ever want to change your LEDs, whether for a different color temperature or after 4-5 years when the LEDs will need to be replaced spending $20 more will save hours of time and possible damage to the LEDs if you're careless with a soldering iron. The wires for the solderless connectors are also made so that you can't put one in upside down and mess up the circuit. Here I've completed one circuit, the Royal blues on this heatsink. And here is the heatsink with all of the LEDs wired up. Now I needed to open up the drivers and adjust the amps on them. Getting the tops off requires removing 4 screws and then prying the tops off, I used a flat heat screw driver to do that. You then turn the adjustment screw all the way counter clockwise to lower the amps, hook a volt meter up to the LED circuit, and then plug the driver in. The royal blue circuit can run at 1300ma per RapidLEDs suggestion, the Cool White circuit needs to run at 700ma since the red, green, and UV LED's should only be run at that level. I also got a piece of tap and labelled what each driver was set to, just in case I ever needed to know, which was which in the future. They give you plenty of thermal compound also, even after putting on all of the LEDs I still had this much left: And I got good at putting on enough so that just the tiniest bit would squish out the side once attached so I knew I had put enough on. So then for the lenses. They provide a non-conductive two part adhesive for attaching the lenses. It sets in about 5 minutes though so you have to work in small batches. The mixture is 1:1 though so mixing is easy. And again once I was done I had a lot left over. I used the now empty packaging from the LEDs to mix it and it comes with a little mixer/applicator. You don't need much to get them to attach, here is a picture with the adhesive on already. They fit snugly over the LED itself on the heat sink of each one. So then over the tank, I have them about 7.5 inches above my tank. And a slight bottom picture with the LEDs at 100% And a tank picture, my camera makes it look more blue than it actually is but the RapidLED site is fairly spot on about the color temperature, it's about a 15-16K. I may add more white LED's to get it close to the 10-14K I prefer but it's fine for right now. Right now I'm running the LEDs at 70% since I was using LEDs over most of the corals prior to this I'm not to concerned about burning corals. Hope this is helpful and if anyone has any questions feel free to ask.